Fed up with Facebook

It was fun for a while, Facebook, wasn't it?

I really enjoyed looking at photos of people I haven't seen since school, university, previous workplaces, and their babies, and their weddings, and holidays. Of course I have always been one to reciprocate. I have plenty of albums of photos of my kids and places I've been and all that kind of stuff.

And I really have enjoyed being back in touch with people who I never would have otherwise, and now I have lots of little friendships re-ignited and all of that is brilliant and makes me happy. And of course it's really handy with us being away for two years. People can keep up with what we're up to and how the kids are changing and growing and it's an easy way to stay in contact.

But recently I started to get sick of the whole thing. I used to post links to my blog through Facebook but then I realised that there were probably quite a few people on there that I really didn't want knowing exactly what I was doing. Not for any terrible reason, just little things like one person who had previously been a good friend who when they moved house just wouldn't even give me their new address to send a card to. Needless to say, why would I want to share what is going on in my life with them. So they were the first person I deleted. (Though actually, going by my little visitor monitor, I think they are still reading the blog, and it's about high time they stuck to their guns and got lost).

Then other friends started doing 'friend culls' of people who they either had made friends with and then had nothing to do with, or people who "bring nothing to the party". You know, the ones who don't do anything on Facebook but lurk around looking at everyone elses stuff and usually haven't even bothered to put up a profile photo. When I stopped posting links to my blog one of these people got in touch with me and asked what was going on in my life as I had been a bit quiet recently. Literally a one line email. I'm surprised they didn't just ask for the web address.

Then I discovered that I could be a bit more experimental with the privacy settings, and I started to block some people's access to certain photo albums, links, and so on. Again, someone who has never put up a single photo emailed me asking if I had had a good holiday and where were the photos from it. Not that my photos are really anything of interest to most people.

And recently it's been friend requests. It's such a sensitive subject for people. If you don't accept their friend request then people take offence. That's fine if it's someone from school or whatever that you never see anyway, but it's a bit more difficult when it's Stevie's friends who we see sometimes when we go back to Scotland. Or your mother-in-law or your mother-in-law's best friend. It's not that I don't like these people, but I certainly don't want them seeing all the little funny things I might say about life with Stevie...now do I?

So it's just becoming a lot less fun and too much like a hassle. Or maybe I'm just tired and need to stop taking it so seriously and go to bed.